In Which I Side With Rats 9 November 2009

You all know by now that I’m awake at night more often than I’d like to be.  Last night, I lay there as long as I could, wondering why I couldn’t fall asleep.  Usually, it’s an exercise in solving every possible problem that could come up in the next 20 years.  Surprise!  It can take awhile.  This time I was caught up in things I’d like to be doing.  It’s as if I would never have another free moment ever and these precious eight hours were all I would have to get a million things done.

I wish I could say these were important tasks, but they aren’t.  Sure, that wedding present is late.  But my sister’s birthday gift doesn’t need to be shipped til next week.  And really, that recorded show from October can probably wait another week.  It just feels like there are never enough hours in the day.  Or maybe I’m squandering the time I do have.  Regardless, I’d rather not lay there in bed thinking about it.

And then there’s this.  Yay!  Lab rats agree with me, lack of sleep isn’t a good idea.  I’ve exhausted my fall asleep methods, now to figure out how to pack more into a day.

Drip Baby 7 November 2009

We realized sometime over the summer that we were getting HBO for free.  Well, not free exactly, since we had already given our first-born to the cable company in order to be able to have full access to AMC’s Hoarders.  What?  We have our reasons.

So, we’ve been enjoying our free year of HBO.  If, by enjoying, you mean sometimes remembering to see if any good movies are on, deciding there aren’t, hoping for a rerun of True Blood instead, and otherwise forgetting we even have cable.  But, we have it and with it we have access to semi-risque programming that involves scantily clad women.  As you can imagine, we’re all about scantily clad women.

This has led us to the early 90s wackiness that is Real Sex.  Have you seen this show?  Between segments on all manner of kinky indulgence (like phone sex, masturbation and mutual massage – the horror!) folks on the street are asked to give their opinion on topics relevant to the clips.  These are usually early thirties folks out for a night on the town, often tipsy, usually giggly, holding forth on everything from spanking to talking dirty.  Not a huge range. Especially not considering the favorite topic of Real Sex – getting messy.

Perhaps the producers were really into food and sex.  Or maybe they love the idea of women with whipped cream on their noses.  One way or another, episode after episode of Real Sex features beautiful women  in some state of food or paint related mess, often in a ring, or pool with chubby, messy men looking on.  Wikipedia describes this fetish nicely, though I wonder if there isn’t a more technical term for it.  Whatever it is, someone out there is fascinated by it.

That someone is shilling faucets.

Acupuncture 2 November 2009

I started seeing an acupuncturist.  I mean really started – just one visit so far.  Apparently, she let loose seven dragons and, considering I didn’t even know I had any dragons, it was very pleasant.

She was a likable lady.  I’ve had mixed results with therapists and doctors of all sorts in the past and it’s always a delight to find someone who is likable from the first instant.  I had hoped she would be as sincere, upbeat and professional as her voice sounded on the telephone and I was delighted to find she was.  Given my typical reaction to white coats (not that she was wearing one) things went very well.

I’m trying acupuncture for a billion reasons, not least of which are the nasty migraines and incessant nightmares.  D and I would both like to get a good nights sleep.   The first session was a long two hours – the first spent exhausting my physical, mental and emotional history and the second pushing needles.  The history was unremarkable, except for the disturbing self-realization that I’m gathering soul scars as I get older.  I deeply enjoyed the second half.

Shedding my pants and socks, I had a lovely high table to lay on with sheets and blankets.  She used seven needles (to release the seven dragons that fight the body’s demons – an initial treatment done once) and put three in my stomach, one in each thigh and one on each foot (or was it ankle?)  She then came back at regular intervals to twist the needles a quarter turn until she’d gone all the way around.  Sounds a little brutal but wasn’t remarkable at all.

The sensations during treatment were remarkable.  As she put each needle in, it felt as though someone was gently pressing down on my back from the inside.  It was a heavy, pleasant feeling.  I’m not afraid of needles, and these are so small, they barely created a sensation other than the weight in my center.  Occasionally, the needles felt cold or radiated tingles, but for the most part, I was unaware that they were there.

During the times she was out of the room, I concentrating on breathing as she suggested.  At first my mind was busy, flying all over the place.  When she came back into the room and I mentioned the commotion, she said I might try being a river bed with the thoughts flowing above.  That worked beautifully and I felt as though I was glued to the table when she came back into the room again.  I couldn’t have moved if she had asked.  I was cemented to the table.  After that I slowly spun upward again until I was ready to be on my way by the time she finished.  I don’t think I’ve been so completely relaxed in a long time.

I’ll be heading back again every week for six weeks to see if the acupuncture has any effect.  Folks have been suggesting I try for years and I’ve always been willing but never motivated to spend the extra time and money.  At this point, no new solutions are coming from the traditional medical community and I’ve always been at home with alternative techniques, so it’s well worth the try.  Here’s to hoping the dragons swallow the nightmares.

It’s Electric 15 October 2009

You might not want to come near me with that pricey electronic thing you’re holding.  If you’ve been near me long enough, you know better.  You know to keep stereos and televisions and light switches and appliances and even cars out of my way.  You certainly know to keep telephones away by now.  I’m like a walking electrical outage.

It hasn’t been bad lately.  I haven’t zapped the other phone (yet) and all the digital displays are working (more or less).  But this week has brought a higher than usual number of malfunctions into range.  First, the alarm clock jolted us out of sleep at 2:30.  Two things to know about this clock: 1) it is never set to go off and  2) it uses light, not sound to wake you.  There is no beep function.  Tell that to a glowing, screeching clock at 230 in the morning when you’ve been having a terrible nightmare about burglars and it’s coming true.  Then, I went to work and watched as the computers fizzled as I walked past.  One lost the internet, the next one’s monitor failed and the third froze and had to be replaced altogether.  I do sit at a public desk people, this can’t happen.  Books must be checked out!

These mishaps do not include the internal car lights that flashed repeatedly at me a few days ago, the stopped clocks in three of my meeting rooms today (including the one on my cell phone) or the ambivalent attitude all of my phones about receiving calls.  Tried to reach me today?  You didn’t.  But, I’m typing and no lights have flickered and I feel like that’s making progress.

You’ll have to suspend your disbelief here for a moment, but I can assure you, these electronic episodes only happen when I’m stressed out.  How self-centered you’re thinking (stop smirking and read)!  No one can make electricity fail!  Ha ha you silly thing!  As much as I’d like to agree with you, this has happened my entire life.  When I’m angry, lights flash or go out.  When I’m nervous, electronic devices flutter and fade.  When I’m stressed I walk around followed by a host of beeps as machines disintegrate.

Believe or not, this is noticeably better than exploding radiator and air hoses (‘91) shattering coffee cups (‘99-01), falling picture frames (‘95, ‘00), locking doors (‘95-98) and flapping blinds (‘92, 3,’5, 7 & 8).  Flapping. Blinds.  What I am?  The kid from poltergeist?  Regardless, this week isn’t a good week for you to show me your new iPhone.

No More Than One Path 25 September 2009

In the restroom, the students hang fliers.  There are the standard club fliers and audition notices.  A few stalls still have 2005 Women’s Center stickers with informational blurbs about sexual assault and helpful phone numbers.  It’s a perky sign.  I can never decide whether that makes me more, or less, likely to read it.

Occasionally signs are defaced.  The abstinence crew is easy with the pens.  Quick to decry any sex, no matter how non-consensual, the Wait! and Promise Ring contingents are always armed with a witty (and hurtful) remark to jot onto the sexual assault signs.  Once peppered with comments, those signs can never come down fast enough.  Before the inevitable trip to the bin, it’s gratifying to see the backlash from the more reasonably-minded folks that frequent the stall.  Thank goodness they also carry sharpies.

The latest sign to catch my eye fell into the club category and  proclaims that a “large group!” will be meeting this Sunday (Sunday, Sunday) to share supper and fellowship.  There will be SINGING.  And also, PRAYER.  But probably no dancing, unless it’s swaying with the Lord’s love.  Sorry, some of my snark snuck out.

I don’t begrudge groups the right to publicize in the stall.  Paper bulletin boards, walls and doors with your missives, houses to rent, cds for sale and religious invitations.  I’m for it.  Here’s what I’m not for: alienation.  You’re the Swedish Culture Group?  Let’s not write, Swedes Only.  And, for the record, that group (and there is one) does not.  By the way, Dinner Is Only 10 Dollar$$$!  There will be dancing!  Of course, you’re with me here – outright discrimination won’t do.  But what about alienating folks based on your name?  Although I am just as happy to see that a Christian group is meeting as I am to see that FAME is auditioning models and photographers (bring 3 inch heels if planning to walk), the name of the Christian group is One Path.

I wasn’t offended at first, actually I was pondering the inclusion of the “large group!” notation.  As someone who is inordinately shy in new groups, I’d be thrilled to see outright that I wasn’t walking into a tiny, religious room of three.  But “One Path”?.  Why is it just one path?  Lots of folks use the phrase one path but this instance is nagging at me.  If I had considered going to the group (billed only as Christian) I might feel put off by the implication that the group is so steadfastly aligned behind the one. path. that they’ve named themselves that.  What if I had a different, but compatible path?  Am I not welcome?  Is there a screening process?  How can I tell in advance?  Does this one path imply a specific religion?  It’s too much for me to linger over on the loo, but I’m clear on one thing: as someone who isn’t generally put off by the paper graffiti all over the restroom, the words one and path together have certainly sent me into an irritated tizzy.  Clearly I don’t have enough to do.

By way of begging forgiveness for that half-baked bit of piss and vinegar, I give you this photo from our recent trip to North Carolina.

You Are Late. 10 September 2009

I am here waiting and I have been here waiting 13 minutes.  I wasn’t even on time.  I was 2 minutes late.  This isn’t the first time I’ve waited, in fact, I have waited so many times that I have, in essence, stopped waiting.  This is why you’ll find me working in my office at 13 past instead of at your darkened door, waiting.

At first, I attributed it to your busy schedule.  You are more important than I am and so that gives you the necessary leeway (both because you have more power and because you are more involved) to arrive a bit late from back-to-back meetings.  After being in some of these meetings with you, I observed that you often schedule things on top of one another, without regard to when one event starts and another ends.  You seem content to believe that your presence for any amount of time is more valuable than the disruption.

I tolerate (though barely) your propensity to let your own meetings run long.  Once you start talking, you make astute comments and offer helpful solutions to problems.  Since you are the best person to get something done, I’m willing to stay past the end of the meeting (so long as it doesn’t make me more than a minute or two late for the next one) in order to benefit from your thoughts and experience.  These laudable attributes do not make up for the fact that your lateness is often due to poor time management. It’s okay to simply say, “I’m sorry but I have to go now” and recognize that you aren’t missing anything that can’t be caught up on later.  Although I don’t know the real justification, I assume you aren’t intentionally devaluing your colleagues’ time over your own, and that it isn’t your perception of your own elevated importance that makes it acceptable to make those around you wait.

I’m not so tightly wound as to never be occasionally late myself.  Professionally, I’m usually mostly on time, meaning I might be a minute early but that I’m usually not more than a few minutes late.  When I am late, it is with honest apologies and a fair bit of contrition.  I would attribute this to a previous career in the heart of government bureaucracy, but experience offered a few folks like you there, too.  Notably, one supervisor who arrived daily between 2 and 3pm, read the paper until 4:30 and then expected me to sit with him while he made phone calls and read email, usually for at least an hour.  You are better than he was, but you still are not here.  And, I am still waiting,

I’m more tolerant of flexible timing in my personal life.  Sometimes I am later than I want to be.  Sometimes I bring something to read because I know I’ll be early.  If you’re late and we don’t need to be somewhere, I’m happy to be patient.  Perhaps if we were friends, it wouldn’t matter.  Unfortunately, I work for you and while I wait, I work less effectively.  I can’t plan to be anywhere else and I’m inefficient for constantly looking at the clock.  When you arrive, sometimes as much as an hour later, I’ll be waiting.  It’s unfortunate for us both that I was at my best 60 minutes earlier.

09/09/09 9 September 2009

I don’t know why I’m so delighted to have written today’s date over and over again.

09/09/09.

I have, of course, done this for the last eight years (01/01/01 and its other, older, brothers) In a pervious job, I’d have signed fifty telephone bills and dated each meticulously. In fact, even if the bills hadn’t been due yet, I’d have dated them 09/09/09 anyway (just like 02/02/02 – by the way, that was a disastrous year and not just for having to hand-date 50 telephone bills every month.) Regardless, it’s fun to make this many 9s.  Almost as fun as it was on September 9 10 years ago.

Here’s hoping you’re having as much fun as CNN.

The Reason I Couldn’t Help 28 August 2009

Folks, this could be considered graphic.

Sometimes, I’m a pretty bad wife. Occasionally, I’ll insist the chicken is still frozen so that we have to have pizza instead. And, every so often, I’ll stick my head out from a  book and say, “Why is the cat meowing?” without even checking to see if he has food. I know, dastardly. I don’t even make up for it in other ways. You see, I don’t like to touch the wet laundry unless there’s lotion nearby and I don’t like to fold things that are inside out. I don’t like to unpack things and I don’t like to talk about key racks, picture frames, closet organizers or decor. But, at least I do these thing every so often. Throwing her a bone, so to speak. Like I said, I’m a pretty bad wife.

I don’t think I’d had a single panic attack until I rode a collapsing deck down a couple of stories. After that, creaking wood sent me into heart-fluttering shakes. But otherwise? Totally okay. Totally okay in all areas except, apparently, disco rice. I would link that, but I’m not up for whatever images might be behind that Google search. No, seriously.

I think I’ve been storing up panic. Pre-deck crunch, I went to Africa a reletively undamaged person. In fact, I’d say my interests ran to the macabre and that I had a stronger stomach for gore than most. And then I spent one very hot afternoon in an African morgue. Culturally, it was fascinating, though that word implies a lightheartedness I don’t intend.

A crowd of women in colorful fabric crouched around a small set of steps in the morgue courtyard. The courtyard itself was pretty, trees and benches dotted a walled cement area framed on one side by tall concrete and the other by a low L-shaped building. The women wailed. Isn’t that what you’re meant to do when mourning? It’s not really crying anymore, it’s a ripping sort of hollow sob that rises and falls with your breath and your memories. I watched them cluster and mourn while I was taking a break from watching a body.

This was on the heels of several mundane things. The stereo from the embassy truck was stolen after delivering the coffin. My boss yelled at me on the cell phone for not being able to be two places at once. I watched dried leaves drift on the pavement. It also followed some firsts for me.  Speaking with the tender-voiced manager of the morgue about why we would need to use our U.S. coffin. Explaining why someone needed to stay with the body. Learning about the draining mechanism in the steel lining of a coffin.

Even now, I’m unable to give eloquence to that afternoon. There was blood in swirls on the floor. And, there were bodies. More than I expected. Stacked and carried in ways I hadn’t expected. A smell that never faded, even after hours. And of course, there were bugs. This is not CSI’s cool, dimly lit morgue. This is a bright, summery place with no air conditioning and wide open doors and windows. Honestly, it was easier to stare at the tiled walls than at the waiting body. Or worse, the wide hallway with a slide-show of atrocity. At least, it was easier until I realized that I wasn’t dizzy so much as the tile was moving. And that the small, white bugs responsible for the movement were everywhere.

You know, that’s all I can say today about that day. And it’s the first time I think I’ve put it into writing. Shared with someone who wasn’t my partner or a therapist. I’m not sure how I developed the idea that the larvae exclusively populated one-hour crime shows, read-in-a-day detective thrillers and third world countries. How privileged to assume wealth is an inoculation.

One weekend before we moved in, we left a trash bag with discarded sandwich wrappings on the floor of our new kitchen. When we came back a few days later, I picked up the nearly empty bag to toss with the rest of the painting detrius. I’m sure I don’t need to explain what was under the bag. I can’t anyway.  The 20 minutes of sobbing and shaking that followed was enough to turn D. pale. That was a real panic attack. It put my issues with cracking wood to shame. She cleaned up the mess and soaked the kitchen in chemicals. I don’t know how long it took or how awful it was. I’m not even sure where I went in my mind as it happened.

Last night, we discovered our outdoor trashcan had picked up unwanted visitors. First a few, then a lot. I think we’re both happy that I wasn’t the one who discovered it. Regardless, I also wasn’t the one who dealt with it. If, by dealing, you mean dousing the interior with dichotomous earth and returning, green, to the house with this statement “Let’s throw out the whole can.” I can’t help but wonder if she’d be less squicked if I hadn’t turned the first instance into weeping, startling panic. But they are gross, and I don’t blame her for wanting to spare the trash collectors.

Summary?  She is amazing and I am damaged.  I’m the lucky one.

Not Witty and Clever 24 August 2009

As much as I wish I could tell you witty and clever things about the weekend to both amaze and inspire, I’m having trouble shaking the late summer blues. However, if I were witty and clever, I would tell you about:

The biscuits I had this weekend at a local restaurant that might have been better if they didn’t look like whole wheat rolls while simultaneously tasting like biscuits.  I thought eye-taste confusion really only happened with mashed potato scallops and the like. I was wrong.

The return of students and their impossibly skintight jeans to campus. Perhaps they will start wearing these

The tendency of the millennials to consider a busy signal an indication that no one will ever answer. Not even several days later.

By the way, despite my grumpy and generally high-strung nature, my wife still loves me. She draws delicate hearts with our initials in the steam on the shower door. D + M.
Dear reader, you would love her, too.

Dream a Little Dream 18 August 2009

“You were talking in your sleep!” (Optional guffaws of laughter) “Do you remember what you were dreaming about?”

Of course you’ve had that conversation. You’ve been on one side or another at a sleep-over, with someone new the morning after, with your mother/husband/sister/cousin. Either you’ve been called out, shamefaced, on your nocturnal mumbling or you’ve done the same to someone else after having been woken in the middle of the night, wondering who on earth is shouting about the ham. It’s a fact of life.

I’m a world class sleep-talker. I’m intelligible (most of the time), coherent (usually) and audible (always). If I’m talking, you’re probably going to hear it. And then you will mock me the next morning for being a) a spy, b) part of a cleaning crew or c) a hostage negotiator. Maybe I should move into sleep-extermination because, more recently, you’ll have been mocking me for pointing out all of the sleep-bugs that have swarmed into our sheets.

Of course, you won’t be doing that until you’ve put your heart back into your chest after picking it up from the floor where it jumped out in terror after I woke you, screaming. Because sometime in the last year, I moved from your average, run of the mill, sleep-chatter to fully-leaded night terrors, sleep-walking and sleep-shouting. Everything but sleep-ballroom dancing. This had led to more than one difficult night for D and I, and has left me both reluctant to go to sleep and inclined to fully equip a second bedroom. Though I’m not sure it would be any less traumatizing if I went about my nightly antics in another room where she could hear but not see me.

Regardless, I thought we had things well under control until she went out of town for the weekend. Dear readers, I have begun a whole new type of sleep-shenanigans. I’ve been sleep-texting. While I don’t normally sleep with a phone in the room, with D out of town I prefer to have a link to the outside world nearby on the off chance of a home invasion or radioactive insect swarm (see? I told you, night terrors). A security blanket , if you will. And, while this may be divulging too much information about my psyche, I keep that phone tucked under a book in the drawer second from the bottom of the bedside table. Just in case the home invaders/insects think first to take…my phone. I never said I was sane.

So there I am, sound asleep, fishing out the phone from its accessible but complicated hiding place so that I can text my friends. Text them grammatically perfect, punctuated, reasonable logical messages while never being aware of doing so. That thumping sound? It’s my stomach sinking into my toes as I try to figure out what prompted their morning text replies. Clearly, I need to keep all tools of communication out of the bedroom. Thank goodness I’m not inappropriate while snoozing or I can only imagine what I might have done while sound. asleep.

That acupuncture appointment I made for October seems a very long way away.